CIA director goes to fuel-starved Cuba, Czech-German clash over “Sudeten” Congress, Rough week for LatAm’s right

Cuba has run out of fuel, and the CIA director is there for it.

US spy chief John Ratcliffetraveled to Havana yesterday just hours after the communist-run island said it had run out of fuel due to the ongoing US energy blockade. Ratcliffe, the highest ranking Trump administration official to visit, went to reiterate his boss’s vision of a “deal”: if Cuba opens up its economy and cuts ties to Russia and China, the US will engage with the regime economically. With the island out of fuel and Washington choking out any further supplies, the island’s already-chronic blackouts will widen – people are reportedly using charcoal and wood for cooking. Although Cuba has no organized political opposition, shortages have recently prompted small protests. The coming days are among the most crucial in revolutionary Cuba’s nearly seven-decade history. Will the regime capitulate to Trump?

History’s back again! Czech officials blast Germany over “Sudeten” Congress

Far-right members of the current Czech government are blasting Germany over a Bavarian official’s plans to attend the first-ever congress of “Sudeten Germans” in Czechia next week. Flashback: in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler stoked secessionism among the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia before annexing their territory in 1938, a key cause of World War II. After the war, Czechoslovakia – along with Poland and others – expelled millions of those Germans to Bavaria, in a mass ethnic cleansing. While Prague and Berlin have in recent years made strides in acknowledging that history, it remains an explosive issue for nationalists in the region – the Czech foreign minister clashed this week with Germany’s (increasingly popular) far-right Alternative for Germany party over the issue. Relatedly, Hungary’s new Prime Minister Peter Magyar last month put the post-WWII expulsion of Hungarians atop the agenda in his first call with Slovakia’s nationalistic PM Robert Fico, whose government had outlawed criticism of that history.

Rough week for the LatAm right

Earlier this week, we wondered whether the Latin American right’s recent electoral winning streak might end in upcoming contests in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina. Recent days have only added to the intrigue: in Brazil, leaked texts and voicemails have linked Flavio Bolsonaro – son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro and the likely challenger to leftwing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva later this year – to a businessman at the center of a sprawling fraud scandal. Next door in Argentina, the increasingly unpopular President Javier Milei saw Parliament question his Cabinet chief over serious graft allegations. And in Bolivia, miners protested against center-right President Rodrigo Paz, who defeated the country’s socialists in an election barely six months ago. The silver lining for all three: there’s still a long way from here until each of their next respective elections.